Making Aadhaar mandatory for free midday meals in schools is Orwellian

Eight years ago, Indians on a whim and probably a prayer to our innumerable deities, approved a potentially dangerous model of self-identification. Called Aadhaar, it was promoted by folks who copy-pasted the US’ social security system on India.

This model was supposed to wipe out graft in the subsidy system. Replace subsidies with cash, let the system be voluntary — only poor, consenting adults need to join. On the face of it, it was a benign order. Today, it stinks of all that was wrong when Eric Arthur Blair wrote about this sort of thing.

You’re the MealOn February 28, the government — through Prakash Javadekar, minister of human resource development — said every child with access to school education and a midday meal scheme should line up for Aadhaar.

So, children from Porbandar to Purulia and Gangtok to Guntur will have to get their fingerprints and eyes registered electronically to get one meal from a government-sponsored school? Yes, if the ministry’s fatwa is correct. Kids in Jammu & Kashmir, Meghalaya and Assam are exempt, mysteriously, from this fatwa. Which means they can have lunch without logging into the all-seeing sarkari eye in the sky.

There are many things wrong with this. First, Aadhaar was designed to be a voluntary scheme, which means only consenting adults could take part. And why not?

Innocent kids know nothing about costs, prices and subsidies, which is what Aadhaar was supposed to be about. What does a 10-year-old know about cooking gas subsidies?

Eat their hearts out

Given that, what is the logic to link Aadhaar with primary school education? Or a free lunch in school? Does the state have the right to deny a meal to a poor child if she hasn’t signed up to be fingerprinted?

Second, it is silly to assume, as the sarkar must have done, that it is better to dole out cash rather than fresh cooked meals at schools. Yes, the anganwadi or crèche system or the midday meal scheme can go wrong sometimes because of the lack of basic hygiene or awareness in the hinterland. But those events are outliers. On average, the anganwadi system for young children and midday meal schemes in schools are doing all right, thank you very much.

The midday meal scheme as well as the Right to Education Act, which GoI signed in 2009, ensured that kids landed up in schools, whatever the standard of teaching was. Across states, the level of government school teaching ranges from ‘nothing’ to ‘good’. Even assuming nothing is taught but a meal is served, the kids and their parents are better off.

Suppose every child lines up to get fingerprinted and her retina recorded and the sarkar decides to reward her parents with cash equal to the value of the midday meal. Given the graft and porosity of states’ administrations, what is the guarantee that even a single rupee will come through? Is this a replacement for a garam meal at lunch in school?

Even if teachers don’t teach much in sarkari schools, anganwadi workers land up everyday, whatever the weather, to feed the kids their midday meal. This was a tradition that began in Madras (now Chennai) in the mid-1920s, when the first midday meal scheme was started in schools. That it continues today is a mark of its robustness.

No Such Thing as a Free LunchThree, replacing a midday meal with cash transfers will be a blow to skills of socialisation — and possibly national homogeneity. But does the government care?

In our society, where norms about how you eat and with whom are rampant and it’s a shame to share a cup of water with someone across a caste or class or religious divide, a shared school meal makes a big difference. Why? Sharing a meal in school, without having to bother about the identity of the person sharing it with you, can teach a lesson for life to young children. Not knowing or caring about the caste or religion of the person cooking the meal might help dilute narrow identities in young minds. Applied properly and voluntarily to the correct projects and people, Aadhaar is an excellent idea. Imposed on poor, schoolgoing children, to possibly deprive them of fresh lunch, socialisation and attendance will be an abomination.

In that case, ask yourself why the sarkar wills this. The only logical answer I can think of is to build a database of every child who will become an adult in 10 years or so. This is a frightening thought.

Eric Arthur Blair, born in Motihari, modern Bihar, officer in Burma, journalist in Britain, volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, would probably have had a telling phrase to describe this recent drive by the government. After all, under his pen name, George Orwell, he wrote today’s bestseller, Nineteen Eighty-Four. And he coined the phrase, ‘Big Brother is watching you’.